Today’s class was Carla Sonheim’s Blobs & Sidewalk Cracks. If you don’t know Carls, she’s an amazing artist who paints wonderful animals that are vibrant, full of life and have awesome character. Carla “finds” her animals in peeling paint, blobs of oil on the ground, cracks in the sidewalk and in random marks. She loosened us up by starting with some contour drawings and once we were thinking in terms of the line, we went outside and wandered around with some paper looking for cracks and blobs.
We drew out what we found on the paper and then went back to the classroom to flesh them out into pen drawings of animals. I ended up with a seal. Next, Carla gave us some cards that she had painted blobs on and our task was to turn those into creatures as well. The best part of the class came after lunch when she demonstrated how she creates her depth of color through layering her watercolors. We then tried her techniques ourselves and created our own colored blobs to work on, I ended up with some Cookie Monster looking thing, a mutant hedgehog and a green shark.
The night wrapped up with the vendor event, Carla Sonheim, Dan Essig, Traci Bunkers and others were selling their art and other wares. I managed to get downtown before the even and headed to one of my Port Townsend favorites the Hanazono Asian Noodle House. I had a wonderful bowl of Udon but there was strangeness at the noodle house. Toes were everywhere — apparently these creepy toes were the halloween decorations, it was just weird.
When I decided to come to JournalFest I decided I would take some classes that pulled me out of my comfort zone. I have certain beliefs about books and journaling and one of the things I don’t like are sculptural books that have no utility. I want my books to be used and to accumulate the patina of use. With that in mind, I took Dan Essig’s class on making a mica book.
I’ve admired Dan’s work for sometime and I though his instruction was thoughtful and well planned. He provided us with a materials kit that allowed us to experiment with a variety of techniques such a trapping, inlay, sewing and staining. Over the course of the day, he demonstrated each technique and then we stepped through it with the materials in the kit. BY the end of the day, we had produced a seven page book that was made entirely out of mica and bound with a two needle coptic stitch.
I actually like what came out of the class and I’ll amend this post in a couple of days when I have a change to take some photographs. While I don’t know if I’ll produce another mica book, Dan provided a lot of information about mica and its properties and I can definitely see incorporating it into my wood and polymer books.
We closed out the day with a fire at the beach and journaling in the Beach Shelter, a small structure down by the waterfront. There were hot dogs and marshmallows and pens were flying.
As I was looking at the calendar today, I suddenly realized the JournalFest backs right up against Halloween. While I’ve made a few things to trade already, I decided to make a few more cahiers to celebrate Halloween. Since JournalFest takes place in the Pacific Northwest, the logical choice seen to be Ravens & Skulls.
I’ve been working on wrapping up my trades so I can pack them up and ship them to Port Townsend. Today, I completed all of the Emergency Journaling Kits. I made 20 of these to give away so I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a little selective about who gets them. Here’s a shot of them as they’re about to get packed up.
A couple of people have asked what’s inside so here’s a detail shot of the contents. Each kit contains 10 sheets of Fabriano Artistico, a 0.3 Micron pen, a micropalette with Daniel Smith watercolors and a small paintbrush for the watercolors.
When I saw this funny little song, I instantly thought of Tiphoni Moore. For those of you who don’t know here, she’s Tracy and Teesha Moore’s daughter and she is a color mixing demon. From a basic mixing palette, Tiphoni can mix any color and match it perfectly within seconds. It’s fascinating to watch and I wish I could do it half as well as she can.
